Monday, 10 April 2017

Menon
hints that India could drop “no first use” and strike Pakistan's arsenal in some circumstances

Ajai
Shukla

Business Standard,
10th April 17

The debate
over India’s nuclear doctrine, which was first formulated in 1999 and revised
in 2003, has centred mainly on whether India should abandon its doctrinal
commitment of “no first use” (NFU) – the undertaking to not use nuclear weapons
unless India is attacked first with weapons of mass destruction – and the
credibility of the so-called “massive retaliation”. But now, after former
national security advisor Shivshankar Menon hinted strongly in his recent book
that India could, in certain circumstances, launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes
to knock out Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, there is a noisy debate on the
doctrine.

Menon
himself has not clarified what precisely he meant in his book, “Choices:
Inside the making of Indian foreign policy”. However, a group of young
strategic experts in the US and UK have carefully parsed Menon’s words and
convincingly argued that he has departed significantly from India’s
traditionally restrained and reactive nuclear strategy. In its place, India’s
former top nuclear Czar, an esteemed figure in strategic circles, has outlined
a pro-active strategy that increases India’s nuclear options dramatically.

Vipin
Narang, a strategist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says
Menon’s new strategy enables Indian planners, if convinced that Pakistan might be preparing a nuclear
strike, to order wide-ranging nuclear strikes to take out that country’s nuclear
arsenal, disregarding “no first use”. In essence, India might adopt a position
of pre-emption rather than waiting to be struck with nuclear weapons. Narang’s
interpretation of Menon’s words has evoked rapid-fire agreement from Shashank Joshi of the London-based
Royal United Services Institution, Sameer Lalwani of the Stimson Centre, The
New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and others.

For Indian
planners, this should open a heady conversation. Yet most Indian nuclear
strategists and academics have long been wedded to the status quo and to
formulaic recitations of the official doctrine, which was formulated at a time
of vulnerability when New Delhi was countering post-nuclear-test sanctions through
responsible behaviour. These Indian strategists argue, somewhat unconvincingly,
that Menon has said nothing new.

Each side
believes the other has an agenda. The status-quoists (mostly Indians) say the
argument that Menon has expanded nuclear strike options is alarmist, and aims
at creating grounds for non-proliferation activists to curb India. Those who
see Menon’s views as path breaking allege that denial of a more pro-active
Indian nuclear posture stems from the fear that more Nuclear Suppliers Group
members might be alarmed into opposing India’ membership.

According
to traditional war-gaming scenarios, a nuclear crisis between India and
Pakistan could be triggered by a damaging Pakistan-backed terrorist strike in
India. To placate a seething Indian public, New Delhi would launch military
offensives into Pakistan. Unable to halt the Indian strike corps with
conventional forces and with defeat looming, Pakistani generals would order a
“demonstration” strike on an Indian army column, in Pakistani territory, with
tactical nuclear weapons: sub-kiloton nuclear warheads borne on the short-range
Nasr missile which has a maximum range of 60 kilometres. The aim would be to
cause limited damage (say 14-45 tanks destroyed and about 100 soldiers killed),
to warn India to withdraw and to force Great Power intervention.

However,
New Delhi’s response to such a strike, going by its declared nuclear doctrine,
is currently “massive” nuclear retaliation that causes “unacceptable damage” in
Pakistan. Most strategists believe this obliges India to retaliate with
full-strength nuclear weapons (15-100 KT) fired at multiple Pakistani cities,
in what is termed counter-value strikes. This would cause casualties in the
millions, but would leave intact much of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal that is
supposedly larger than India’s. Naturally, Pakistan would retaliate with
massive counter-valuestrikes on Indian cities,
imposing catastrophic destruction on our dense population centres.

How realistic is this? New Delhi’s
established restraint in the face of Pakistani aggression – including Kargil in
1999, Parliament attack in 2001, and Mumbai terror strikes in 2008 – creates
scepticism that New Delhi would deliver on the mutually destructive, and
therefore inherently non-credible, threat of massive retaliation. Even Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control last
year were characterized by careful restraint.

Menon has
now made massive retaliation more credible, by including options other than
visiting Armageddon on innocent civilians. He writes: “If Pakistan were to use
tactical nuclear weapons against India, even against Indian forces in Pakistan,
it would effectively be opening the door to a massive Indian first strike…
India would hardly risk giving Pakistan the chance to carry out a massive
nuclear strike after the Indian response to Pakistan using tactical nuclear
weapons. In other words, Pakistani tactical nuclear weapons use would
effectively free India to undertake a comprehensive first strike against
Pakistan (emphasis added).”

A
“comprehensive first strike”, in nuclear warfare jargon, refers to a
pre-emptive strike on the enemy’s nuclear arsenal – rather than cities – with
the aim of disarming it. It has the moral virtue of not threatening the
death of millions of innocent civilians and the strategic logic of disarming
the adversary, making it both more credible and more responsible.

Menon is
hardly the first Indian official to question NFU. In the 2003 doctrine, India
expanded its nuclear retaliation options in two ways over the 1998 version.
One, India would retaliate with nukes not just to a nuclear attack, but
also to an attack with any WMD: nuclear, chemical or biological. Two, an attack
on Indian forces anywhere in the world (including inside Pakistan) would be
regarded as an attack on India.

NFU’s
further erosion continued through public pronouncements by serving and retired
officials. In 2014, former strategic forces command chief, Lieutenant General
BS Nagal, wrote an article suggesting NFU be replaced with a policy of
ambiguity, leaving open the door for pre-emptive nuclear use. Nagal cited six
reasons, including that India’s leadership would be morally wrong in placing
its own populace in peril.

In
November 2016, the then defence minister, Manohar Parrikar, stated: “India
should not declare whether it has a NFU policy”. It was later clarified that
this was his personal view.

Now,
Menon, known for his sobriety and restraint, has argued for pre-emptive first
use: “There is a potential grey area as to when India would use nuclear
weapons first against another nuclear-weapon state. Circumstances are
conceivable in which India might find it useful to strike first, for instance,
against an NWS (nuclear weapons state) that had declared it would certainly use
its weapons, and if India were certain that adversary’s launch was imminent.
But India’s present nuclear doctrine is silent on this scenario.” Menon clearly
believes that doctrinal silence allows the space for a pre-emptive strategy.

Rebuttals
of this interpretation of Menon’s book have presented varied counter-arguments.
Some of the more curious responses have included that Menon did not know what
he himself meant by “comprehensive first strike”, which, for a strategic
thinker of his sophistication, is downright insulting. Others claim that
analysts are reading too much into two short paragraphs in Menon’s writings.
But important nuclear strategies and doctrines have been presented in less
space: India’s 2003 doctrine is only eight sentences; John Foster Dulles’
famous “massive retaliation” doctrine was contained within two short
paragraphs; and, in December, President-elect Donald Trump signalled a major
shift in America’s nuclear posture in 140 explosive characters.

Manpreet
Sethi of the Centre for Air Power Studies and Rajesh Rajagopalan of the
Observer Research Foundation observe that a comprehensive counterforce strike
would require an arsenal that India does not have: high-accuracy,
nuclear-tipped missiles, nuclear targeting coordination and sophisticated
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to locate Pakistan’s
nuclear weaponry. In fact, India is developing precisely these capabilities: a
larger inventory of more accurate missiles, multiple independently targetable
re-entry vehicles and a missile defence shield to guard high-value objectives
against retaliatory Pakistani strikes.

Sethi also
argues that retaliation makes for a more credible doctrine than first use
because the first use of a nuclear weapon is never an easy decision for any
leader. In fact, a first strike against enemy nuclear forces might well be an
easier decision than “massive retaliation” that kills millions of innocent
civilians.

Rajagopalan also says new strategies being discussed might just be the
“personal views” of people who have not considered the “serious problems that
comes with a first strike or first use strategy.” This is hard to sustain about
Menon, who is known to carefully weigh his words.

Are
Menon’s radical new proposals just a cat’s paw, a trial balloon to assess
reactions to Indian nuclear assertiveness? There is little to support that
view. It would appear as if Menon, a creative thinker who realizes the infirmities
in India’s traditional nuclear doctrine, has interpreted it anew to create a
wider menu of options for Indian decision-makers in a nuclear crisis. While
declining comment on interpretations of his book, Menon revealingly commented:
India’s current nuclear doctrine has far greater flexibility than it gets
credit for.

"Manpreet Sethi of the Centre for Air Power Studies and Rajesh Rajagopalan of the Observer Research Foundation observe that a comprehensive counterforce strike would require an arsenal that India does not have: high-accuracy, nuclear-tipped missiles, nuclear targeting coordination and sophisticated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to locate Pakistan’s nuclear weaponry." ....

....these types of uninformed statements from analysts annoy me. How many Agni production samples does the SFC have to launch as part of regular user training to convince people that India now has a credible missile capability? Also, when it comes to intelligence and surveillance capabilities, isn't that what India's Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites, remote sensing satellites, and AWACS are for? Not to mention that the Su-30 MKI has strategic reconnaissance capability of its own.

The likes of Shivshanker have been out played by Pakistan. This is the cause of all the wriggling, flipflopping, pain trying to rollback from what they thought was the correct approach to being seen as the "nice" nuke power by the world.

The Pakistanis kept focus, on why they spent all this money on nukes: To be used in case of India crossing the red lines. Not only that when Pakistanis said they will introduce TNW (NASR), Indian laughed, how could the Paks, who cannot even make a bicycle chain miniaturise a nuke. What they didn't know was, by the time Paks announced that, they had already done their homework!

The result, no one knows what India's position is today. Nor are their leaderships word mean the same anymore. The stalemate on the sub-continent will continue, with Pakistan checkmating and containing India to the sub-continent, whilst at the same time Chinese pumping in $62 billions.

This is the cheapest option for China. China also knows Pakistan will never back down from confronting India as long as Kashmir remains an issue between them. The lesson learnt from the SURGICAL STRIKES is that more Indians have been killed by PA since and Modi has learnt that Pakistanis don't get bullied.